2013 is a long, long, long way ahead. And who knows, if the SPD is really as stupid as to pick Steinbrück, and the Greens don't eclipse the SPD and accept the SPD's choice, an eventual Merkel lection defeat won't bring positive change, either.

If the EU really destroys itself from the inside while the centre-left continues to do the same to itself, fascism will have a comeback: sooner or later one of the truly fascist far-right parties (like Jobbik of Hungary or Chryssi Avgi of Greece) will win an election.

I can't envision it happening in Greece. I support the Left in Greece, but the reaction to the fascists of the 1970s has mostly righteous, but also in some instances knee-jerk. And it has hurt the left. The vast majority of Greeks do not look fondly on that period, and to a degree Greece is inured from it more than most countries. Greece was not always one of the most left-leaning countries on the continent, not always one of the most Anti-American. There's a reason for what happened. And the reaction to the early 1970s is still strong, and still in play.

But for how long? The Greek centre-'left' is destroying itself as executioner of austerity, the military dictatorship is no living memory for younger voters, and the target of Chryssi Avgi is not university students but foreigners, and once push would come to shove and the fight would be against leftists, today's shop-burning anarchists would be easier to demonise and marginalise. (What is Chryssi Avgi's relationship to/view on the junta anyway? Is there a clear connection?)

Yes, there is a clear connection between them and the junta. Remember, Greece is a society that tolerated a level of violence by domestic terrorists that exceeds what was going on in other European countries. Right now, the business interests and the rich are the ones who are taking the brunt of public opinion. The current chaos already fits into the narrative Greeks were predisposed to believe, which is why you saw more protests and more of a reaction in Greece than you saw anywhere else.